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BIGGER THAN ME PODCAST
192. Meghan Murphy: Feminism vs. Gender Identity: Are They at Odds?
Meghan Murphy, host of The Same Drugs podcast, joins Aaron Pete to discuss feminism, trans rights in sports, cancel culture, and the importance of free speech. She shares her journey from a committed leftist feminist to a vocal critic of modern gender ideology. Banned from Twitter, blacklisted in Canada, and later invited on The Joe Rogan Experience, Megan explains why she continues to speak out on women’s rights and freedom of expression.
Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host.
Aaron Pete:Aaron Peet.
Aaron Pete:What is going on with the feminist movement? Is it growing or fading away? I'm speaking with a woman who took a stand for women's rights when it was difficult to do so. We discussed the feminist movement, trans people in sports being invited onto the Joe Rogan experience and the importance of sharing your voice and your perspective. My guest today is Megan Murphy. Megan, thank you so much for being willing to join us today. Would you mind first?
Meghan Murphy:briefly introducing yourself. I'm Megan Murphy. I'm a writer, I'm the host of the Same Drugs podcast, I lived in Canada for 40 years before exiling myself to Mexico and, yeah, I'm trained in journalism. I'm very glad to be here. Thank you for having me.
Aaron Pete:Would you mind giving us some of the origin story? People might be familiar with a bit of your story your experience with Twitter in 2018, but would you mind taking us through your journey prior to that?
Meghan Murphy:Yes for sure, it's a long journey. I launched a website called Feminist Current back in 2012. I did a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in women's studies. I I think I'm actually the only person on the planet who ever made use of that degree by, you know, criticizing women's studies and modern feminism. To the extent that I have, um, I know it from the inside and, um, yeah, I was. I was a socialist for most of my life, essentially. You know, I sort of like oscillated between identities like Marxist or anarchist when I was younger and settled on, you know, the more moderate socialist as I was got older. Um, and, yeah, I was really, really invested in leftist politics and feminist politics for most of my adult life, and so that's what most of my writing.
Meghan Murphy:Early on, because of a specific fight that was happening in Vancouver with an organization called Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter, and they were forced to go to court. They were dragged through one of these human rights tribunals by a man calling himself a woman, and they did win eventually at the Supreme Court, I believe and they won the right to define their own membership, which, for them, ensured that they didn't have to allow men to train as counselors at this women's shelter, this shelter for women who were escaping, you know, really, domestic violence and really, you know, horrific male violence in general, but as a result, they were tarred as transphobic for all the years following. You know, I think this case happened back in 1999 or something like that. So they were constantly under attack by these trans activists and by a lot of leftists in Vancouver, and I was allied with these women. I was very supportive of the work that they were doing for women and I was defensive of them, and so I got schooled in gender identity ideology, trans activism and defending women's spaces pretty early on.
Meghan Murphy:So I started, you know, covering this, this fight, back in, you know, around 2012 and so when the um, when bill c16 came along, which was canada's gender identity legislation, which passed in 2017. But when that bill came along presented by the Liberal Party, of course, in 2016, I was one of the only people in Canada to speak out, and certainly one of the only people in Canada to speak out as a feminist and a leftist, and I managed to, after like a great deal of struggle, publish a piece explaining my criticisms of the bill at the time in in the National Observer. And, you know, luckily, I had my own website, my own platform and my podcast so that I could cover this extensively, because the Canadian media not only, you know, wasn't covering it not fairly in any case but they refused to even acknowledge that somebody like me would have a criticism. You know they would. They would allow for Jordan Peterson to be presented as as a critic of gender identity legislation and gender identity ideology, because they could frame him happily, as you know, like this bigot and this misogynist and all of those things. But they couldn't do that to me because I was this leftist feminist. So they just pretended that I didn't exist and essentially erased me from the conversation and blacklisted me. You know, like I'd, I'd written for a lot of these publications prior.
Meghan Murphy:I'd written for the CBC, I'd been on the CBC before and I yeah, you know, I I struggled and struggled to speak out about this in Canada, but it was an enormous challenge. I mean, I could barely get a venue to speak in. We would get counseled at every turn. I didn't have any resources or any funding. It was always just me and like a couple of other women just trying to talk about this, and I testified against the bill at the Senate in 2017. In 2018, at the end of 2018, I was permanently banned from Twitter for essentially for criticizing gender identity, ideology and trans activism. But the tweets in question that had me permanently banned were saying men aren't women, and I referred to a man named Jonathan slash Jessica Yaniv as him. So those were my crimes. I was banned from Twitter for four years until Elon took over and freed me.
Aaron Pete:Wow. The part I want to start with that stood out to me is where you started from in your schooling the perspectives you had. What brought that change about? That's a pretty significant move and I think what we're seeing right now, hopefully, is people's commitment to movement on positions that we shouldn't kind of ground ourselves in one understanding forever, that we should adapt to the facts on the ground, be willing to open our minds to different perspectives. That doesn't mean we have to agree, but that that is a part of living, that is a part of the human experience. What brought that about for you?
Meghan Murphy:Yeah, and I think that you know if you're genuinely interested in understanding the world around you, if you're genuinely committed to truth and integrity as best you can in any case and you know if you are genuinely a critical thinker, if you're interested in learning, you will change your mind when presented with new information, and that's what happened to me. You know, I was very invested in a very particular ideology for a long time and at a certain point, I started listening to alternate points of view and reading different perspectives. And you know, really I feel really blessed to have the podcast that I do the Same Drugs, because I was able to interview so many people who saw things differently than I did and had different experiences than I did. And I learned a lot from these people and, you know, I've changed my mind about a lot of things as a result. And it's very amusing to me because now people come at me and they're like oh, you're just this, like right wing ideologue. You know you're just knee jerking, you're obsessed with, you know, trump, and they call me MAGA and all of these things. And I'm like call me MAGA and all of these things and I'm like you guys.
Meghan Murphy:For 40 years of my life I was this like uber leftist uber, like I was more feminist than the feminists and I was more left than the leftists. You know the NDP wasn't leftist enough for me because they dropped the word socialism from their platform. That's what I was, you know. That's when I think I was quite unthinking, you know, and I think that the gift that I was given from that experience is that I really understand the way the left thinks and I know what it's like to be an ideologue and I know how it shapes your worldview and limits your, your ability to understand the truth and to understand people. And to you know, yeah, to to really understand those around you.
Meghan Murphy:Um, because I thought that people who didn't think like me, ie right-wing people or conservatives or whatever you want to call them I just thought they were either, you know, stupid. They just needed to be re-educated, or they were greedy, or they weren't empathetic, like they didn't care about other people. They were selfish. That's what I thought, and so I know that's what the left thinks about these people. And now I guess people like me, because people now label me bright wing and conservative, despite the fact that I don't know that those labels particularly fit. I don't really. I'm not super attached to any label and I don't know that any label fits me perfectly, but people like to categorize and label people so that they can dismiss them more easily or decide if they're an ally, I suppose. But yeah, I mean I just I started to poke holes in my own arguments and my own politics. What brought?
Aaron Pete:that on Like. Did you just become interested in challenging yourself? Did you get exposed to somebody who you didn't have an answer for? I'm just trying to figure out how do we replicate that? How do we help people challenge their own perspectives over time? How do we support them in challenging their own assumptions?
Meghan Murphy:You know, I think there was a big turning point for me when Hillary Clinton lost the election in the US and Trump won, because I was totally confused about how that could happen. I didn't know anything. I thought I knew a lot, but I didn't know anything. You know, I bought all of the propaganda that was being fed to me around how horrible Donald Trump was and I thought Hillary Clinton deserved to win and that anybody that didn't support her hated women. You know, that's what I bought into that narrative.
Meghan Murphy:And when she lost, I was devastated. You know, I couldn't believe it. I cried and I had never voted in an American election at that point, I don't. I was just so invested in this idea that it was like, you know, men, men versus women and good versus evil, and the evil man had won, and I couldn't believe it and I didn't understand it. But what I did do was that I sought to understand. I was like, okay, I don't understand anything. Like I had no idea that it was even possible for Donald Trump to win this election because, you know, mainstream media told us that it was impossible. They told us, essentially, that she was a shoo-in to, and listening to and reading all sorts of different kinds of people, and it was around that time when the so-called, at the time, intellectual dark web was coming up.
Meghan Murphy:So I did start, yeah, like now. I think we kind of refer to it more as like heterodox, I suppose. But I did start, you know, listening to Jordan Peterson, for example, and I started to see the way that you know, the feminists around me that I worked with and engaged with and, you know, shared politics with and allied with, you know they were so unthinking and so unwilling to consider different points of view and so invested in cancel culture. And you know, around that this was also around the time when me too was all the rage and I remember being in Vancouver and there were men who were getting canceled and their lives were getting destroyed. And you know, maybe some of those men did deserve it, maybe some of those men were awful men who were rapists or who were dangerous in some way, but some of them weren't um, and it didn't matter. You know, a woman would say something and everybody had to believe her, no matter what um, and there was nothing that the accused could do to defend himself and we couldn't talk about it. I remember there was a man who was the head of the creative writing department at UBC, stephen Galloway, and he was accused essentially of abuse, but nobody would explain what happened. Nobody explained what the abuse was.
Meghan Murphy:The media covered this story, you know they covered the accusations but would not report on the incident or incidences. And when I would ask, ask other feminists online, you know, in our little Facebook groups or whatever, when they were, you tarring Stephen Galloway as this horrific, abusive, dangerous misogynist and I would ask, I would be like, well, what did he do? Nobody would tell me, but I was expected to participate in this mass cancellation campaign against him. I was expected to believe the accuser, who also no one knew. You know, this was an anonymous accuser that we were supposed to just blanket believe. And Steve Galloway's life was destroyed. You know, he lost his job, he lost his career. He was a very well-known, successful writer in Canada, which is not an easy feat, but he was, and you know he suffered essentially a mental breakdown.
Meghan Murphy:Um, and these, these women, were just so committed to a narrative that they didn't know anything about this case. They didn't know, they knew nothing about what happened, they didn't know anything about the accused or the accuser. And I was getting, you know, canceled by these women just for asking what happened. Does anybody know? Well, we know, but we can't say. Or you know some, some people know we, we know he's bad. How do you know what you know? And he didn't do anything. It was a bogus accusation. Um, and yeah, I, I, you know, like I talked to some people, journalists, who were covering this accurately. You know my friend, john Kay, who I've known for a long time.
Meghan Murphy:He edited me at the Walrus and the National Post a long time. We've been in touch for a long time and he was one of the only ones speaking out against what was happening to Stephen Galloway. And you know, I just was like this is this is BS. These, these people don't want to think, they don't want to know, they don't want to understand. They just want their mantras and their ideologies, their anti free speech. You know, while we were, these were the radical feminists and the leftist feminists who were opposed to gender identity ideology. So we're all getting cancelled for saying that men aren't women and you can't change sex. We're all being silenced, we're all being no platformed. Women are losing their jobs, um, and they still can't bring themselves to defend free speech.
Meghan Murphy:You know, I was never a huge defender of free speech prior to like 2015 or something, because I, as a typical progressive Canadian, just didn't. I was never necessarily against free speech, I just didn't think about it. It just didn't seem important to me. I think I probably just assumed I would always have it, and then I didn't. And then I saw, you know, these cancellation campaigns happening to so many other people. I was subjected to many, many, many cancellation campaigns and so I became a defender of free speech and all of a sudden, all these women were turning against me because I was talking to people who I wasn't supposed to talk to, people who were, you know, sexists or racists or Islamophobic or whatever. And I was like how can you be on, be a target of a cancellation campaign, be canceled because you're supposedly transphobic, because you say this, this thing that's true but not politically correct, and then still advocate that others be canceled for the same reasons, because they don't share your politics and your idea?
Meghan Murphy:I just saw, I saw so much hypocrisy. I was so frustrated. I also just found the whole thing really intellectually lazy. And I'm a writer and I and I write because I this is how I process and understand the world, this is how I figure out what I believe through that process and I was getting kind of bored of myself. I was just like I felt like I was just repeating and saying what I was supposed to be saying. You know I have a feminist analysis, so naturally my view on this is this expected feminist analysis and I was like I don't want to, I don't feel like I'm thinking this through fully and I want to. I genuinely want to understand and genuinely want to understand, and I want to challenge myself to know if my ideas and my arguments and my analysis is sound. Um can?
Aaron Pete:I ask a question yeah, in your experience on that I'm just thinking of, like I. I've been a fan of jordan peterson since the beginning and I I feel like he's gone in a direction in the very recent past with his partnership with the Daily Wire, like I, just I feel like he's. When I first started listening to him, the part that I really appreciated was that he'd talk about the importance of the left and he'd talk about the importance of the right and how they both have an integral role to play, and I learned a lot from that role to play and I learned a lot from that and I do my best to live with that perspective that right now in Canadian culture it looks like the Conservatives are likely going to win the next election. They're going to have power for four to eight years and then we may be able to review potentially whether or not they're the right fit during that time period that we have to adjust with the information on the ground.
Aaron Pete:Right now, I feel like he's been at war with so many people for so long, he's been attacked for so long that it feels like at the moment not forever, but at the moment he feels like he's picked aside. He's interviewing pierre polliev, he's interviewing maxine bernier, he's not interviewing jeng meet, saying I know he may have reached out, they may not be interested in that interview. I totally understand that, but it just doesn't. It feels like he's been forced onto a team for the for the time being and that he he's aligned himself with people that he that have also been put in a similar boat and I I'm just trying to think through how do you manage that? Because that's I can't imagine what that is as an experience to have people trying to stop you from speaking, having your twitter account banned banned like you're.
Aaron Pete:That must feel like you're at war, like everybody's trying to stop me from speaking. This is all going on, and so I'm just trying to figure out how do you digest that during these periods, because it's so easy to go. It's those people over there now that are the problem, and now you're just you could end up on the other side, but it sounds like you use writing to kind of process where you're actually at and check the temperature in the room and try not to kind of become loyal to one new position over the other and be dogmatically on a new side. How do you kind of process that, because there are people coming after you and trying to take your livelihood, make sure that you don't have a financial income. That is something to take personally. That isn't something to say oh, it's just the internet, like that's a real experience that you would have to carry.
Meghan Murphy:Yeah, and it was. It was exhausting and it was stressful and it was really hard for many, many years. Um, at this point, you know, I think I've developed such a thick skin that there's not much that bothers me at this point. I feel like I've been canceled so many times that I'm like well, what are you going to do to me now? Um, and you know, the tides have turned so it's easier to speak about a lot of these things. Thank God it's still.
Meghan Murphy:You know, there's still lots of censorship to go around and you know, in Canada I still struggled to speak about gender identity ideology. You know, I was back in Canada and BC over the summer and early fall last year and we were trying to organize events. We still lost every single venue we booked. We still get protested, we still get threats. Um, things are changing a lot in the us, obviously because of trump's win in large part. Things are changing in other countries around the world. At this point, canada there's a bit of pushback, but you know, they're still really clinging to gender identity ideology and a lot of the woke stuff in particular.
Meghan Murphy:I guess I just don't see left and right in the same way that I used to. I think I really have rejected the left. I don't see much value in leftist politics or ideology anymore, and it's because it just seems phony to me. You know what leftists say. We can talk about Canada in particular. I suppose you know what leftists or progressives in Canada say is almost always rooted in BS, like it's not rooted in reality. It's not rooted in facts. It's regurgitated narratives that have been fed to them by their algorithm or by the media, or by an easy one is that you know, trans women are a marginalized population.
Meghan Murphy:They're always under threat. You know they're in danger at all time. They're. You know. There's some kind of oppressed group of people that are called trans people, which I don't buy into at all because I would like to know what a trans person is, beyond somebody just announcing that they're transgender. You know, there's no such thing as a transgender person as far as I'm concerned. You're either a man or a woman, and you can have all sorts of feelings about gender and gender roles. You can have, you know, cosmetic surgeries if you want to. Um, you can dress however you like, but you can't change your sex. If you're male, you're always male. You're female, you're always female. There's no such thing as somebody who's in between or has managed to cross over biologically.
Aaron Pete:Um so just like to follow up on that, just to make sure I understand.
Aaron Pete:Sex has remained, from my understanding, the same, but it's the gender piece that people have claimed has been more fluid.
Aaron Pete:And again to your point, this is regurgitated information that I've heard and my cursory understanding but the gender has been more flexible throughout human history. That sex, to your point, is much clearer and easier to identify, but that gender piece is something different than sex and I think that's where the vulnerability was on this topic. That's where the complexity stands is because we do have two different terms. I'm not exactly sure why or how long that's existed for, but for some reason we have two terms and at one point in time we realized that there are people who are male who like to dress as females, or females who like to dress as males tomboys. We understand that there's flexibility there, and then that, from my perspective, has had a microscope put on it for the past few years and we've really been trying to figure out why do we have this term gender and why is it separate from sex and how do we think about these issues, and that's become a public, a very public conversation.
Meghan Murphy:Yeah, so gender has been melded with sex in a really confusing way, thanks in large part to this gender identity ideology debate. So to me I sort of wish that the term gender didn't exist at all, because I think it just confuses things. And you're right, it is sort of a new term in the English language. In any case, in other languages the words gender and sex are kind of the same, or there's only one word and it sort of means gender, but it also means sex. So in the English language and in our modern context, gender is just about gender roles and stereotypes, so masculinity and femininity. So, for example, the idea that girls like pink and boys like blue and boys like to play with trucks and girls like to play with dolls, and as a woman I like dresses and makeup and high heels and being passive and nurturing, and those kinds of ideas and you know a lot of those things are actually rooted in evolution, but they're just not hard and fast rules and it just doesn't really matter all that much. Like whether or not I want to wear a dress or whether or not I like the color pink has no bearing on my biological sex. I'm female, regardless of my personality or clothing preferences or my haircut or whatever. You know, when I was a kid, I was a tomboy. I probably, like still am kind of a tomboy, like I don't really think of myself as a very feminine person in terms of my personality. Um, so, yeah, it's just sort of. It's sort of a useless and confusing concept, especially because we've now conflated it with sex.
Meghan Murphy:And if you talk to trans activists, which is always a very confusing conversation, you know the whole ideology is really incoherent. But they'll say no, no, no, you're you're confusing sex with gender. Gender is fluid. You're confusing sex with gender. Gender is fluid. And I'm like no, you're confusing sex with gender because you're the one saying that a trans woman is actually a literal woman. You were the one saying that a man who identifies as a woman is literally female when he's not. If you want to say this man loves wearing women's clothing, then fine, this woman, this man loves wearing women's clothing. This man doesn. This woman, this man loves wearing women's clothing. This man doesn't like masculine stereotypes, that's fine and that's actually something that, you know, feminism fought for during the second wave, you know, in the seventies and eighties, was to say you know, boys don't have to be um, unemotional. You know, it's okay for boys to cry, it's okay for girls to do masculine things, it's okay for Can I?
Aaron Pete:quickly just ask would you mind clarifying your position Like where do you stand on feminism? Like, what is your alignment? I've heard about the first, second, third wave feminism. Which one resonates with you?
Meghan Murphy:I mean, I sort of don't identify with feminism anymore. I just say that I advocate for women's rights. You know, women's rights are important and will always be important. I've always been critical of third wave feminism, even when I was, you know, more invested in feminist ideology, I suppose. But you know, when I first started writing about feminism publicly in my blog, on my website, in my journalism and so on and so forth, I really identified more strongly with second wave feminism, which, and the aspect of second wave feminism that challenged pornography and, you know, domestic abuse, violence against women in general, prostitution you know, I was invested in like material things that were happening to women I wasn't interested in talking about, like slut shaming and mansplaining and this idea that you know, a woman is empowered by any choice she makes at all. So if she chooses to do pornography, then you go, girl, that's an empowered choice that she made.
Meghan Murphy:Um, I always thought that third wave feminism was pretty silly and actually pretty harmful to women in a lot of ways. Um, but yeah, I mean I would say that I'm invested in women's rights and there's still lots of places around the world where women and girls don't have rights. You know Afghanistan, saudi Arabia, and it's yeah, it's just. It's interesting how twisted things have become when modern feminists are, you know, refusing to criticize Islam, for example, and are saying things like sex work is work and that you know prostitution is just a job like any other, when you know prostitution and sex trafficking is such a massively harmful, disgusting industry that hurts women and girls all around the world. You know, it's just.
Meghan Murphy:I think that feminism has really become a joke in a lot of ways in the Western world, so I don't want to align with it. And, of course, you know, so many modern third wave feminists align themselves with this gender identity nonsense and it's like how can you call yourself a feminist, how can you claim to be standing for women's rights when you're defending men in women's sports and violent predators being transferred to women's prisons and allowing grown men to walk into girls change rooms with their genitals out? You know, it's just. It's so appalling and and backwards. So you know, I don't, I don't want to align myself with that, that kind of ideology or movement.
Aaron Pete:it's embarrassing right the, the piece that I'd like to try and make sure that I touch on.
Aaron Pete:In the start you had talked about, like how conservatives typically are seen as less compassionate and that that was your understanding growing up. The only piece that I just I want to hone in on a little bit more is when you talked about like trans people and how they're marginalized and how we have these groups of people and like that it isn't the case that there isn't as much evidence. The only piece that that makes me think of is that piece that you talked about, that that doesn't sound compassionate when you say it and I'm not saying that you're not compassionate, it's just when we say things like that to me that reminds me of that sounding of a lack of compassion, a lack of compassion for the maybe very so. Say there's a hundred trans people and you and I don't. We we agree that a large percentage of them are bad actors in this process, but a very small few maybe good actors, struggling young people who are struggling with their identity. They still deserve that compassion. I'm just wondering if you can help me square that circle.
Meghan Murphy:Yeah, I mean, I feel awful for young women who are growing up during this time and who believe that because they don't like femininity or they're feeling uncomfortable with the changes they're experiencing during puberty, or maybe they're young lesbians and they are told, oh like, maybe you're a boy, maybe you're actually a man. You know these surgeries and these hormones, these puberty blockers, will make you feel better. They'll make you feel more like yourself, as opposed to being told. You know you're a teenager and you're experiencing normal teenage things and we all struggled with going through puberty and our changing bodies and you know figuring out where and how we fit in this world. And you know, and a lot of the young women you know who are being trans or identifying as trans, if you listen to their stories, so many of them have histories of, you know, molestation and sexual assault and things like that. And you know it makes a lot of sense that if you had that kind of experience, you would want to shed your female body in a way. You know, shed what you interpret as being the reason that you were molested or raped or whatever it was. You know your body that's becoming sexualized by adult men as you're going through puberty. But yeah, you know, I feel awful for those girls and those girls' lives are being destroyed. Their lives and bodies are being destroyed by this ideology and this practice. So it's not that I think that people identifying as transgender are necessarily bad or don't deserve compassion, but I'm not interested in having compassion for men who are, you know, walking into women's spaces and making them unsafe. I don't think that. You know, being nice is not an important value to me. I think that it's more important to have integrity and to tell the truth and to be ethical and to do what's right. So a lot of things that I say do come off as mean, and some of them are mean, but we can't always be nice about everything if it means that we have to lie or stand by and watch something dangerous happen.
Meghan Murphy:And that's what I saw happening with gender identity ideology right away, you know, as soon as it, when it was just a debate, when we were just arguing about it in our feminist blogs, then that's one thing, but once we start talking about legislation, things become really serious. Once we're legislating around this idea that again is incoherent and that essentially nullifies women's rights, then this is a big deal. And that's when I, when I really, really really doubled down on speaking out and was really really quite disappointed to see how many, how few people were willing to stand with me in Canada, including feminists and certainly including leftists. You know I had a lot of people who I knew agreed with me but would say you know, but I can't, I can't possibly speak out. You know it's too dangerous right now and I'm like, well, you're just, you're waiting until it's too late. And why is your life so much more important than my life? You know I'm losing and risking everything. You know I don't have financial stability, I don't have safety, I don't have anything here. But you know, somebody has to say something before it's too late.
Meghan Murphy:And it of course, did become too late. I wasn't able to stop this from happening and hopefully, now that more people are speaking out, we can turn things around, but I just can't believe we let things get this far with this craziness. But yeah, I mean in terms of the compassion piece, like I, I I feel compassion for the individuals, but as a whole, this practice and this ideology and this legislation is, across the board, bad and wrong and unethical and disgusting and dangerous, and I think that the people advocating for men to be allowed into women's spaces and women's sports. I think they're doing something bad. I think that the people advocating for minors to be put on puberty blockers and hormones and have these surgeries that render them sterile and destroy their bodies for life are doing something really bad. So I don't really see a way to be nice about that, because I think it's just such a big, bad, dangerous thing.
Aaron Pete:That did clarify that for me. I appreciate that. The other piece that I wanted to ask about is how does the transgender movement impact women's rights from your perspective?
Meghan Murphy:hacked women's rights from your perspective. Well, I mean there when I, when I spoke at the Senate in it was either at the end of 2016 or early 2017, when I testified against Bill C-16, I talked about how this ideology was really actually quite sexist. So, you know, saying that being a woman isn't just about a biological and material reality of being female, but that it's inherently attached to femininity, I saw as a really regressive idea. I was like this is what you know. This is why women, in part, were prevented from voting. It's like you don't need to vote, you shouldn't be participating in public life, you're too delicate for politics. Women should be in the home and having children and taking care of their families and sort of like they should be seen and not heard, kind of thing.
Meghan Murphy:I was, like you know, saying that these, these stereotypes are what makes me, what defines my womanhood is, is sexist and regressive. So there's that piece. But you know, women fought really really really hard for the right to compete on fair ground in sport, um, and they won that fight in the U S, in in Title IX, for example, and all of a sudden, these men or these males are being allowed to compete and they're winning all these competitions and these girls who worked so hard their whole lives to compete, to get scholarships, to get opportunities, um are just being pushed aside and erased.
Aaron Pete:for these, these guys who are essentially cheating can I ask how, how widespread is this from your? That's the what I. I've heard this, and then the question that I get put back to me is how widespread is this? We hear about the outlier cases where this comes up, but what would your response be to somebody who says how widespread is this? Is this a real growing issue?
Meghan Murphy:I mean, I guess I don't think it's relevant how widespread it is, because it's happening and if it happens one time, that's too many times happening. Um, and if it happens one time, that's too many times. Um, I mean, I feel like we're hearing about it pretty regularly in Canada and in the U S? Um, where men are, you know, competing and winning track races, or you know, winning in swimming competitions, or you know, we see, you know, we've seen um seen men competing on, like women's rugby teams in volleyball, you know, and there's been, there's been women and young women, you know girls who've experienced really Gaines, have lost competitions to men. Leah Thomas, right, you know it's not. It's definitely happening and it's widespread enough to matter.
Meghan Murphy:But if it was just one man, it would be too many men. You know women's sports are for women, End of story. Like, there's no exception there. You're male, you compete as a male. If you're not good enough, too bad. Sorry, this isn't about your feelings. This is about sports and athletes and competition and fair rules, and it's just wild to me that we even need to explain this and talk about it. And it does seem to me that it's happening everywhere. Like I was just watching a video on Instagram of a girl who was in a jujitsu competition fighting this massive man who was identifying as a woman, and I was like this is just sick.
Aaron Pete:You know there was a you knowma, um, you know it's, it's, it's dangerous, too right like women can be really seriously hurt, it's just, it's a huge safety thing, especially, uh, like, of course, joe rogan came forward when it started happening in mma and was like, okay, this is not, this is not the same thing. These are two people in very different physical conditions. On that note, we talk about the challenges and you went through many of them people trying to silence your voice and your perspective on these issues. Then a person like Joe Rogan comes forward and reaches out and extends an olive branch, comes forward and reaches out and extends an olive branch. Less about the maybe the experience like I'm just wondering what does that mean when you've been silenced and pushed to the side so many times to have somebody reach out and go hey, I'd love to speak with you. Like, what was that experience like and what did that mean to you during during that period?
Meghan Murphy:yeah, I mean that was incredible. Joe Roggan is an incredible person. He's like a highly ethical, really genuinely good man, despite you know what the mainstream media tries to say about him. He's a genuinely wonderful person and he cares about doing the right thing and he cares about the truth. And when I was banned from Twitter, we tried to sue.
Meghan Murphy:We lost the case, um, and he had talked about it on the podcast a number of times, um, and actually it's the first time that I was on Rogan's podcast. I had reached out and I was like thank you so much for covering my case. I really appreciate, appreciate that you keep talking about this Cause. He just kept talking about how crazy it was. I was banned from Twitter for saying that men aren't women, um, and I was like I'd love to to talk about my, my case. So then he invited me on and we became friends after that. So the next time I went on, I you know, I think I just kind of happened to be going to Austin he was like, hey, come back on the podcast. But you know, he did so much for me. He supported me, he helped me out when he didn't have to. He had nothing to gain from me. I have nothing to offer in this world. I know you know I'm not an important person. I have no power Um world. I know you know I'm not an important person.
Aaron Pete:I have no power. Um, and yeah, you know he, he sticks.
Meghan Murphy:Can I just briefly say that I think it's tragic that you say that, um, that you don't have anything to offer after I don't mean, I don't have anything to offer in terms of you know, obviously, my voice and my writing, but it's like you know, he doesn't gain anything from supporting and platforming me. If anything, the first time he had me on he had something to lose because you know he would be attacked as transphobic for having somebody like me on who calls men he and, you know, points out that you know a lot of these men who are identifying as women, are autogynephiles and are men with fetishes and are perverts. Like sorry, but you know you're going into a girl's change room with your genitals out. You're a pervert. That used to be like a pretty accepted thing in society, pretty accepted understanding.
Meghan Murphy:So, yeah, I don't. I don't mean that in like a self-deprecating way, I just mean that, yeah, I mean he, he supported me and helped me out in a lot of ways when he didn't have to because, you know, in part because we were friends and and in part because you know it was maybe it was the right thing to do. Like you said, he was one of the ones to speak out against this early on when Fallon Fox was fighting a woman in the MMA and he was like this is dangerous.
Aaron Pete:Right. I'm wondering what advice you have. It does feel like we're heading into a new time. Freedom of speech, to me, is a responsibility. It's's a right, but it's also you have responsibilities with the rights that you have. What advice do you have for others looking to share their voice and grow into it.
Meghan Murphy:I mean, I think you, you, you know, I think anything goes, I think you should be able to say anything you want to say, even if it's offensive, even if it's mean, even if it's unpleasant. I have never enjoyed self-censoring, Um, I just want to be myself, and I think that that's something that a lot of people in this world, especially young people, are lacking. You know, they're scared to speak, they're scared to say what they really think, um, and I think that's kind of tragic. You know, I know a lot of people who, you know they're scared of their own friends. You know they're scared of what will happen if they challenge the accepted ideologies or politics of their friend groups. You know, this is a really common thing in Vancouver.
Meghan Murphy:Vancouver is a very progressive place, and when I started speaking out against transgenderism, I lost a lot of friends. I was ostracized by a lot of people, but I also had a lot of friends who would tell me privately that they agreed with me and they supported me, but they couldn't possibly say so, you know, not even to their wives, and I just can't imagine living like that, and I think I want people to know how good it feels to speak out and to tell the truth, even when you lose friends, maybe even if you lose your job. You know, if you get attacked online, it's okay, it's hard and it can be stressful, but at the end of the day you come out stronger and you come out more confident and you come out liking yourself more. You know to live with integrity and authenticity feels so good. You know you want to talk about empowerment, that it feels really empowering, um, and it it makes you brave.
Meghan Murphy:You know people are not born brave. I don't think I don't think you're born fearless or even courageous. I think that you gain those qualities by doing. You know, I think I became brave by doing brave things and I became much less fearless by doing things that were really, really scary. You know, speaking about speaking out about this stuff wasn't easy for me. It was scary.
Meghan Murphy:Putting yourself out there is scary, even just in your writing, nevermind going out into public and into the public and speaking in public and saying controversial things. It's scary and it's like you do it anyways and then you realize you can and that's what makes you brave, and I think that I want to encourage people to do that and to understand that and not to think oh well, you know, maybe Megan can, but I can't, that's just not me. Well, it could be you if you do it, and we have to. You know Canada has let way too much slide and I think we're so close to a really really bad, scary situation where people don't have rights and freedoms. We've already experienced a loss of rights and freedoms.
Meghan Murphy:You know we saw what happened over COVID and what the government did to the convoy and supporters of the convoy, and we know how far things can get if we don't stand up and speak out. And it's now or never. There's no safe time. If people are waiting around for a convenient time when it becomes safe to say something, that's when it's too late. You do it now and it is a risk. That's part of it.
Aaron Pete:How can people follow along with your work?
Meghan Murphy:I would love it if people would go to my sub stack, which is at wwwmeganmurphyca, or they can just search for Megan Murphy on sub stack and become a paid subscriber. It's just like $5 a month and that's. You know, really how I make a living is just through subscribers. You know I'm not sponsored by anyone, I'm not doing ads and not. You know I've stayed independent all this time on purpose, because it's allowed me to do what I've done all these years.
Meghan Murphy:I don't think I would have been able to speak out as much as I have been able to and to cover the issues that I've been able to cover if I didn't have my own personal platform. You know there was nobody limiting me, like I didn't have, thank God, a threat of being fired. I had a threat of income loss and you know, as an independent, it's a huge struggle to make a living as an independent podcaster and writer, make a living as an independent podcaster and writer. So, yeah, I hope that people will come to my sub stack and subscribe. I hope that people will find my YouTube channel and subscribe there. That's really helpful. It's really easy and helpful actually to just find the same drugs podcast on Spotify and click the follow button. That doesn't cost anything. But yeah, yeah, that that would be wonderful. And I'm, of course, back on Twitter now X, and I'm overly prolific there. People want to know my opinion about every single thing in the entire world. That's a great place to follow me. That's at Megan E Murphy.
Aaron Pete:Amazing. Thank you for being willing to share your time today and your perspectives. It takes a lot, as you described, to take a stand or take a position on something when it's not popular, and I learn a lot about the courage and the determination and the resilience of people through those moments and how they're willing to, and the resilience of people through those moments and how they're willing to stand up against a mob in those moments. So thank you for being willing to share your time and your story.
Meghan Murphy:Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Thank you for reaching out. I enjoyed the conversation.
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